Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1321 - 4. Summary

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### 4. Summary

The MD5 message-digest algorithm is simple to implement, and provides a "fingerprint" or message digest of a message of arbitrary length. It is conjectured that the difficulty of coming up with two messages having the same message digest is on the order of 2^64 operations, and that the difficulty of coming up with any message having a given message digest is on the order of 2^128 operations. The MD5 algorithm has been carefully scrutinized for weaknesses. It is, however, a relatively new algorithm and further security analysis is of course justified, as is the case with any new proposal of this sort.

Next: 5. Differences Between MD4 and MD5

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1321 - 4. Summary